


Summer Slipped Us Underneath Her Tongue

by patroclilles



Series: Perfect Places [1]
Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: (...so far), Canon Compliant, Canon Trans Character, Established Relationship, Exploration, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Summer, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, gays on bikes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 16:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18627145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patroclilles/pseuds/patroclilles
Summary: “Have you been here before?” Matteo asks.“I’ve biked by a few times, but I never stopped to explore,” David answers.Matteo looks around, curious. It’s early afternoon and it’s oddly cool for a spring day, but when the sun rays sift through the foliage just right, they warm his body enough to drive away the goosebumps.“But what if we get lost?” Matteo feels goosebumps crawl up his forearms.“Are you scared?” David asks, raising an eyebrow.Matteo feels the sun on his skin again. He warms up. “No.”David gives him a warm smile. “Then let’s go.”





	Summer Slipped Us Underneath Her Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this prompt from an anon](https://nuevayor.tumblr.com/post/184369010083/one-of-my-hcs-is-that-matteo-and-david-absolutely) I got a while ago.
> 
> This fic means so much to me; I wrote it overnight after David's coming-out scene in episode 8 aired in real time. As of today, it's been 18 days since our last happy David. I miss and love him so much.
> 
> Enjoy 💗
> 
> PS. The song Found You by Kasbo and Chelsea Cutler is the perfect vibe for this fic, so maybe have a listen while you read. And the fic title is from The Louvre by Lorde because I listened to the whole album while writing this and I had to choose something lmao.

David gets off his bicycle, his hair bouncing as his feet hit the forest floor. He looks up at the tall trees, breathing loudly with cheeks flushed after having biked with Matteo for a couple of hours around Berlin. Matteo trails behind him, barely keeping his ground as he parks his bike. His chest burns and his entire face is red. He looks at David’s throat in admiration as David looks at nature in admiration. Every time, when Matteo catches up with David, it’s always worth the effort.

David’s gaze drops from the trees to Matteo’s face. Matteo lets out a breathy laugh. Every time.

“Have you been here before?” Matteo asks.

“I’ve biked by a few times, but I never stopped to explore,” David answers.

Matteo looks around, curious. It’s early afternoon and it’s oddly cool for a spring day, but when the sun rays sift through the foliage just right, they warm his body enough to drive away the goosebumps.

“But what if we get lost?” Matteo feels goosebumps crawl up his forearms.

“Are you scared?” David asks, raising an eyebrow.

Matteo feels the sun on his skin again. He warms up. “No.”

David gives him a warm smile. “Then let’s go.”

In every new place they explore, Matteo and David leave their mark in one way or another. In the echoing chambers of the abandoned pool house, they kissed and marked each others’ lips in ways neither of them would ever forget or would be able to erase. At the park by the river, Matteo told David he had broken up with Sara, marking a new chapter he didn’t even know he was starting.

Here, in the forest, they make a new mark with every step in the dirt.

“I wonder how long it will take for our tracks to get covered again.” Matteo doesn’t notice their tracks until David says that. He hears the crunch under his feet as they walk and revels in it.

The wind rustles through the trees, and David grunts as he jumps over a fallen tree trunk. Matteo walks around it. David rolls his eyes.

“Have you always explored like this?” Matteo asks after awhile. They must have already been in the forest for at least half an hour.

“Not always,” David answers, his back to Matteo. He moves a branch out of the way and holds it for Matteo to pass through.

Matteo ducks his head and walks underneath the branch. He sees a twig in David’s hair and uses it as an excuse to comb his hand through his hair, from his hairline to the nape of his neck. He pulls out the twig in the process and shows it to David, who looks at him unimpressed.

Matteo gives David a toothy grin. He steps closer and reaches out to hold onto David’s hips. David continues to look at him, waiting––always waiting.

“Why not?” Matteo asks, cocking his head.

David hums, putting his arms around Matteo’s neck and combing Matteo’s hair at the back of his head with his fingers.

“Fear,” David says simply.

“Fear.” Matteo can relate to that. But –– “But you’re the most courageous person I know.” 

He meant it. David: who never guesses what would be at the end of the road for himself, he just gets in the car and drives; the boy who made a home for himself, who let Matteo in after building impenetrable walls. David: who climbs fences and launches himself out of pools, who explores places barely anyone else thinks to. David.

“Being courageous doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be afraid of,” David replies.

And there, Matteo sees it. A window of time––maybe a second, maybe two––where he could read David completely. Matteo drowns in his terrified eyes, knowing he’ll be back in a second to breathe, bringing David with him. He knows they’ll survive, so he lets the moment wash over them in silence.

David blinks, and then they’re kissing. David’s hands comb and Matteo’s teeth bite. They lean against a tree and discover each other over and over with every brush of their lips. Matteo’s hands move from David’s hips to the small of his back, pulling him closer, and David pulls his head back to gasp in a breath. Matteo’s hands still firmly hold their hips together. They’re in a daze, high off each other’s lips, but they’ve never inhaled air so fresh, so quiet, so green. Matteo’s eyes can’t seem to look away from David’s mouth as time stretches between them.

Their tracks could disappear in the dirt and Matteo wouldn’t care if the both of them were lost and never found. 

 

* * *

 

“I like this, when it’s quiet,” Matteo murmurs.

“Then why are you talking?” David replies, giggling.

Matteo shoves David’s head, nearly pushing the beanie off his head, and David swats his hand away. His giggles turn into laughs from the belly.

Matteo stops walking and takes a deep breath with a content smile on his face. “I feel like I’m just existing, you know? There’s no endpoint or somewhere to be. Nothing to do, no one to owe anything to.” He lets his head hang back and looks directly at the blue sky above him.

“Yeah,” David says. He stands next to Matteo and looks at the sky with him. He holds Matteo’s hand. “I get the feeling.”

 

* * *

 

They find the lake during their second visit to the forest. Matteo is lucky David is good at navigating, having remembered the near-exact route they had taken the first time. This time they left their apartments a little earlier and spent a little more time walking further inland. 

“Wow,” one of them says when they happen upon the lake.

Matteo is as amazed by how alone they are as he is by the beauty of it. They walk closer to the water and kneel by it. Matteo runs his hands in the cool water, pensive. David notices and draws his hand through the water as well, reaching towards Matteo’s hand until he touches it. Then he draws a line from Matteo’s fingers up to his wrist, breaking the water’s surface, and up Matteo’s arm. This draws Matteo’s gaze to David’s eyes. They make a silent agreement.

This is it. This is their new place.

 

* * *

 

After missing a curb a few weeks later, Matteo had a bent bicycle wheel and a gash to the forehead to mend. While Hans cares for his wound in Matteo’s room, all Matteo can think about is how he can’t revisit the lake with David. He’s in a bad mood.

“Tell me what’s wrong, sweetie,” Hans says with concern, gently applying cream to Matteo’s forehead.

Matteo’s eyebrows furrow. “It’s nothing.” 

Hans sighs dramatically as he finishes applying the bandage to Matteo’s wound. “You could just say you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t need to lie, butterfly.”

“Can I just get some iced tea?” Matteo says, but there’s no bite to it. He loves Hans’ homemade iced tea.

Hans beams and leaves to get Matteo’s drink. While Hans is gone, Matteo texts David. _I can’t go to the lake today. My bike got fucked up and it’s in the repair shop now._

Hans returns with the iced tea and Matteo thanks him. His phone buzzes with a text from David. _That won’t stop us. Look out the balcony._

He does. There David is, with his hands in his jacket pockets, standing coolly next to his bike. It’s warmer today than the first time they went to the lake, so David foregoes the beanie and just wears a cotton t-shirt, black jacket, and thin sweatpants.

“It’s a long ride there, you really think we can make it on one bike?” Matteo yells down incredulously.

David shrugs. He lifts a foot to one of the pegs on the back wheels of his bike, implying Matteo use the pegs while David rides the bike. “We’ll manage.”

Matteo rolls his eyes and goes back into his room. Hans, who was on his phone while all of this happened, looks up expectantly from where he sits on Matteo’s bed.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Really,” Matteo says genuinely. “It’s better now. Thanks for this.” He gestures to his forehead.

Hans gazes fondly at him and walks to the balcony as Matteo leaves the apartment.

David’s cool clears away as Matteo approaches him. “What happened?” David asks.

All the dismissiveness Matteo gave Hans earlier disappears as David reaches for Matteo’s bandage. David's brows and the space between them fold over with worry.

“Are you okay?” David asks, his thumb tracing the bandage’s edges.

Matteo softens. “I am.” He means it. He gestures to the bike. “Are you _sure_ we can get there with just one bike? You’ll have to pull twice the weight.”

“I don’t mind,” David says. “Maybe we can switch if your feet get too tired from standing on the pegs. You can ride instead.”

“Not what I would usually do, but for you, I’ll compromise,” Matteo jokes suggestively. David punches his arm playfully.

“Hans is rubbing off on you.” David nods to the figure on Matteo’s balcony.

“Maybe you like it.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Ciao, boys!” they hear as they take off.

 

* * *

 

The ride is easy. Matteo stands on the hind wheel pegs, holding onto David’s shoulders as they breeze through the city. If Matteo wasn’t touching him, feeling the heat emanating from his body and the sweat through David’s sweater, he’d think David is biking effortlessly. He feels the arches of his own feet dully ache from standing on the pegs, but he knows David is struggling more. He offers to switch places, but David stubbornly refuses.

“I can do it,” he says.

“David, come on, _you_ were the only who offered to switch when I got tired.”

David grunts. “Are you tired?”

“Not really but––”

“Then we’re not switching.”

“Is it––” Matteo lifts one hand from David’s shoulder to his forehead. “Is it because of my wound?”

David is silent.

“You know that’s…ridiculous, right? I can still ride a bike, you know.”

“Your bike says otherwise.” David tries very hard to say this smoothly, but he pants through it. They switch eventually.

Matteo didn’t expect to keep the same pace as David, but the ride turns from easy to difficult quickly. There is an upcoming right turn that Matteo uses all his energy to focus on, steeling himself for the strength needed to turn the handlebars and steer the bike.

“We can switch if you want,” David whispers smugly in his ear as they approach.

“Shut up,” Matteo pants. David laughs, and all Matteo can think of is David’s gums showing as he smiles and the wind blowing through his hair. Matteo makes the turn with seemingly no effort at all.

“We’re here,” David says after a few minutes.

They find their way back to the lake with ease. Having been there twice before, even Matteo could guide them.

They stand together by the lake, silent for many seconds. Eventually Matteo kneels, searching the water, and retreats with several flat pebbles. He starts skipping them on the water. David sits down and begins to sketch his surroundings, including Matteo.

“Do you ever miss it?” Matteo asks out loud, almost mindlessly, after a few minutes of skipping stones. He keeps his eyes on the lake, wishing he felt as light as the pebbles as they skipped over the lake’s surface.

“Huh?” David pauses his sketching. Matteo skips another stone.

“The pool house.” A heavy silence falls between them. The pebble Matteo just skipped finally breaks the surface.

Earlier that spring, before they found the lake, they had tried to return to the abandoned pool house where they first kissed. They were met with barbed wire installed on the fence they climbed the first time they went there. Matteo tried his best to hide it, but not being able to revisit the site of such a monumental moment in his life destroyed him. David, on the other hand, seemed to take it in stride. Matteo is still jealous of his ability to do that, but he never asked why this was the case. They just moved on together and tried to fill the void wherever they could. They had, in a way, with the lake.

Matteo can’t bring himself to look back at David now, but he stops skipping stones. He doesn’t hear the scribble of David’s pencil still; he must be considering Matteo’s question.

“What do you mean?” David finally asks.

At that, Matteo turns. David is looking at him, genuinely confused, maybe more so because the question was rather random.

“The pool house, where we first kissed.”

“I know the one,” David replies slowly. Matteo can’t read his face.

“Doesn’t it make you sad that we can’t go there again?”

David takes many seconds to think it over, that much Matteo can tell. Eventually, he says, almost through gritted teeth, “I guess I’m used to not being welcome in places I hold dear.”

The words hit Matteo like a ton of bricks, swinging him wildly towards the lake’s depths and keeping him there. He opens his mouth to say something, and closes it quickly thereafter. He’s rendered absolutely speechless. He collects his emotions and waits for David to speak further. Eventually, he does.

“Places, like people, they change. They come and go in your life, and you find new places that replace the old ones. But the memories remain, wherever you want to keep them. Whether it’s here,“ David waves his sketchbook, “or elsewhere. I don’t miss it like I miss you when you’re not here, if that answers anything,” David says definitively.

Matteo regards David with wonder. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to not miss that abandoned place, even if the lake replaces it.

David’s life story is different than his own, and it fills Matteo with love, pain, and pride to be a part of it. He wants nothing more than to hear David tell him his story, and to take his time while he does it. For now, Matteo sits next to David and takes his sketchbook delicately from his hands. He flips through until he finds the collage of the photo of _their_ pool, with the words “BREATHING… …UNDER WATER” taped over it. He traces the picture’s edges with his index finger, as David looks on with a soft expression.

“I’ll always miss it,” Matteo says finally. “But that’s okay with me.”

 

* * *

 

Matteo rubs his left fingers on the rock he lays on, focusing on the feeling against his skin, letting it calm him. His other hand is immersed in the cool water of the lake. It’s full-fledged summer in Berlin and it's warmer than the last time they were here, but the sun shines just as bright. Matteo closes his eyes and focuses on the rainbow colors the sunshine yields through his eyelids and the light scribbling coming from the left of him. 

David sits drawing Matteo. He wears shorts that cut off right above his knees, and a simple cotton t-shirt with a silver chain around his neck that Matteo had gotten him a few weeks earlier. “To match your septum,” Matteo had said. David hasn’t taken it off since.

“When did you start to draw?” Matteo asks after a few minutes with his eyes still closed. 

This was always them. Silent, until someone asked someone else a simple question. No rush, nowhere to be, nothing to owe.

“Since as long as I can remember,” David says as he turns his sketchbook to get the right angle for shading.

Matteo hums.

“Look, I drew you,” David murmurs. Matteo’s reminded of the first time David showed him his sketchbook. In the rare times he ever sees David insecure, it’s usually when it comes to his art.

Matteo squints open his eyes, bringing his hand up to shield his face from the sun. He sits up and looks at the drawing. Matteo is wearing a black tank top and shorts, but in the drawing it seems his clothes haven’t been shaded in at all. A figure lays on a single rock, and water surrounds them.

“Why didn't you draw me in dark colors?” Matteo asks, curious.

David is silent for several seconds. “I don’t know,” he answers. Not every question needs an answer.

“I love it,” Matteo says. They’re close, so close, and Matteo has to remind himself that he can kiss David. There’s nothing to be afraid of, and there’s nothing or nobody to miss. The figure in David’s drawing is alone, but he’s not. David is here, so Matteo kisses him, marking their recluse lake with the hundredth, thousandth, millionth kiss of this summer. This is _his_ , this is _theirs._

 

* * *

 

It’s the end of summer; the cold nights start to say as much. The air cools Matteo’s skin as he, for once, speeds ahead of David on their way back to Matteo’s apartment from the lake.

On the ride back, Matteo comes to terms with not being able to go back to the lake as it gets colder and colder. He and David will have to find a new place, and that’s okay with Matteo. They’ll make whatever new place they find theirs and mark it like they have every other place. The lake will welcome them back next spring.

They arrive absolutely exhausted, their legs buzzing from all the cycling. Hans welcomes them with hugs. He beams when he sees David and squeals when he’s told that David is staying the night.

“I must offer you my homemade iced tea! Matteo _loves_ it. Whenever he’s ill he’s always begging for it like a baby,” Hans teases as he searches for a glass to serve David with.

Matteo rolls his eyes. “He’s right,” he mouths to David, who grins.

David tries the iced tea and nods his head enthusiastically. “This is really, really good,” he exclaims, eyebrows dancing.

“So do I get some, or…?” Matteo feigns offense.

“Oh, please,” Hans says, rolling his his eyes. He grabs the pitcher of tea and leaves the kitchen.

Matteo smiles and scoffs. He grabs an empty glass, and he and David follow Hans to the living room, where a movie is playing. Matteo doesn’t get too far into it before he starts to doze off, the day’s exercise creeping up on him. He leans his head on the couch and slowly gazes in David’s direction, who looks perfectly awake––who looks perfect.

Hans is telling him something but he’s not paying attention. He blinks, once, twice, and suddenly it’s dark and all sounds turn into mumbles, but he can still see the outline of David between his eyelashes. That is, until David’s figure disappears. Maybe he’s moved, or maybe Matteo is falling asleep.

He hears a soft, soft whisper in his ear, “I’m taking you to bed.” Then he’s limp in David’s arms, feeling light and airy. He finds a pillow in David’s neck until he finds the pillow on his bed, and every movement blurs into the next until David finally joins him in sleep. 

That night Matteo explores his dreams alone, unafraid, knowing there’s someone else waiting on the other side.

**Author's Note:**

> If you dig it, or have any criticisms or grammar corrections (love me those) let me know in those comments and on tumblr @[nuevayor](https://nuevayor.tumblr.com/post/184496272198/summer-slipped-us-underneath-her-tongue).
> 
> Edit (26/05/2019): I'd love to drop in [this amazing moodboard ](https://thisfeebleheart.tumblr.com/post/185157367711/perfect-places-by-nuevayor-places-like-people) that Tumblr user @thisfeebleheart made for this fic series. It really encapsulates the mood that I was going for when I wrote this. Go ahead and reblog it if you like it. :) I'm so happy my fic can inspire more content in this way, ah!


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